‘What’s wrong with poets meeting and discussing their works?’ Judge Dee said. ‘That’s what literature is about. It does not mean they share the same political stance. Not at all, I have to say in all seriousness.’

  ‘Thank you so much for your perceptive understanding, Your Honor,’ Jiong said.

  ‘I’ve recently learned from Her Majesty that Luo had a poem titled “Ode to a Cicada in Prison.” Was that poem composed after he had fallen out with the empress?’

  ‘It’s a masterpiece, Your Honor. The man and the cicada are perfectly juxtaposed in the lines. I’m not too sure exactly when he wrote it, but judging from the title, yes, he must have written it in prison after he had offended Her Majesty.’

  ‘That explains a lot. Especially his decision to join the rebellion—’

  Their talk was interrupted by a young servant, who placed several cold dishes and a dainty kettle of Shaoxing rice wine on a small portable mahogany table between the two of them.

  ‘One more question I have to ask you, Jiong,’ Judge Dee resumed after the servant withdrew out of sight. ‘Do you know anyone really close to, or intimate with, Luo Binwang? Not necessarily just in the capital, I mean.’

  ‘That I do not know. But,’ Jiong added after a short pause, frowning, ‘now you mention it, I’ve heard tales about a fishing girl in the Shu River area who might have been quite close to Luo at one time. As far as I know, Luo spent a couple of days in her boat. It’s said that one of his poems – a hot, romantic one – was written for her, despite the age difference between the two of them, and that other poems inspired by her may be in existence.’

  ‘Really? Thank you so much, Academician Jiong! I’ve never heard or read anything about it.’

  ‘I think I can dig the poem out for you. I mean, if you’re interested in it.’

  ‘Of course I’m interested; that would be fantastic. Can you tell me more about the girl and the poem?’

  ‘It was probably written prior to his prison days. Luo was in his early or mid-fifties at the time, but he remained single. Like other romantic poets, he’d had occasional affairs with women, sometimes in places of ill repute …’

  ‘Does that include the fishing girl in question?’

  ‘She’s not exactly in an illicit business, but there’re stories about the obscure way she makes money.’

  ‘That’s intriguing. Normally, a fishing girl does the simple job of catching fish and selling them to customers, right?’

  ‘Well, she does much more than that,’ Jiong said, tossing a wok-fried peanut into his mouth before taking another long sip of amber-colored rice wine. ‘She has a sampan – a flat-bottomed wooden boat – under her name, in which she prepares so-called “boat dinners” for her customers. All the chef specials are made out of fresh, live catches from the river on that day. The gourmet customers cannot help but come crowding over to her, like moths flying to the light.’

  ‘That surely sounds tantalizing, Jiong. But what if she fails to make any catches for the day?’

  ‘She’s said to be an extraordinary swimmer, gliding over the water like a flying fish, and diving like a mermaid too. If needs be, she would jump into the river there and then, and is capable of catching a live fish with her bare hands in less than five minutes.

  ‘The meal is, of course, delicious, according to gourmet critics, but rumored to be even more delicious is the young girl herself. When she’s jumping out of the river, shaking beads of water from her half-naked body and long wet black hair, stamping her bare feet on the sampan deck, her dudou-like corset clinging to her youthful body, bringing out all the curves, how could her customers even hope to resist such a delicious temptation?’

  ‘Well, Confucius says, it’s human nature to be after both delicious food and delicious girls,’ Judge Dee responded with a chuckle. It was a parody of Confucius, but it was also not that far-fetched. That was one of the problems with Confucianism, Dee thought: its maxims could be so generalized, open to various interpretations. ‘Are there any other things out of the ordinary about that special sampan meal of hers?’

  ‘Well, after the dinner – I mean one-to-one dinner, you know – rumor has it that she decides whether or not to let the customer stay overnight with her, alone in the boat. That’s one thing those customers of her boat told me. She does not let all the customers stay.’

  ‘But she allowed Luo to do so?’

  ‘Apparently, she did. And not only for one night, but for a couple of nights. Not to mention the fact that she must have cooked him three special meals per day for free on the sampan as well. Luo was too poor to be able to afford her prices. The special sampan meals cost a lot.’

  ‘This is getting more and more intriguing. A beauty who truly understands the music indeed. As far as I know, Luo has never been a well-to-do man.’

  ‘You mean the lovers who truly understand each other like the music they are playing? I think I have read that metaphor in a book written in the Spring and Autumn period. Back to the fishing girl, her decisions may not necessarily depend on how much a customer pays her.’

  ‘She certainly sounds like an interesting character,’ Judge Dee said. ‘Thank you so much, Jiong. I have learned a lot from you today, but I have to leave for another appointment now. Her Majesty wants me to set out tomorrow morning in search of Luo.’

  ‘Yes, you have such a lot on your hands, I understand. And I’ll dig out the poem and have it sent to you early tomorrow morning, Your Honor.’

  Two

  ‘Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’

  – George Orwell

  ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.’

  – W.B. Yeats

  ‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.’

  – Albert Camus

  It was now time for the lunch meeting that Judge Dee had told Yang in the morning to arrange in secrecy.

  As always, Yang seemed to be on high alert – probably a bit too much – for his master’s safety. In fact, Yang had been like that almost from the day he first became Judge Dee’s servant, assistant and self-styled bodyguard as well. So Judge Dee was certain that Yang had made sure no one could, or would, hear anything about him meeting in secret to talk with the former Empress Wang’s personal maid Ning.

  Ning herself was too feeble to be able to find out anything about the mysterious invitation, or to uncover either Judge Dee’s identity or Yang’s.

  Sitting in a private room, in a secluded, shaded restaurant that was some distance from the center of the capital, Judge Dee looked up to see Ning shuffling in, guided by Yang. She had a too pronounced stoop for her age, her steps unsteady, and a black veil hung over her face.

  Yang himself had a similar veil covering his face. During this time of the Tang Empire, under the effective rule of Empress Wu, a large number of Arabian people traveled to the city of Chang’an. So a couple of veiled faces in the crowd would probably not appear to be conspicuous or suspicious.

  Apparently, Ning was too sick to stay in the palace any more. A liability more than anything else, she looked like a shadow – or a skeleton – of her former self, though she was only in her late thirties. When she was safely inside the room, she pulled her veil back, revealing herself to be severely emaciated. Her disheveled hair was streaked with white, she had two front teeth missing, possibly owing to a bad fall or a vicious beating, and the corner of her left eye was continuously twitching. She could hardly stand up. There was a dazed, vacant look in her eyes, as if nothing mattered to her anymore – or was even visible to her.

  Still, it was the fate of many palace girls to end up just like her. Having been touched – or even suspected of being touched – by the emperor, they were said to have been baptized with the divine dragon’s dew and rain. Hence, they were no longer accessible to ordinary human beings. Otherwise, they could have been condemned as committing the worst profanity imaginable. They were helplessly doomed to stay pining and languishing in relentlessly imposed isolation for life.

  It was a whispered yet open secret that an empress’s personal maid, too, could have been taken by the emperor. Sometimes, she might have had to participate, like a submissive bedroom maid, in passionate sexual intercourse between the emperor and the empress, helping to push and pull in the midst of two panting, writhing, entwined bodies.

  Ning had been allowed out of the royal palace probably because she was too sick. Besides, she failed to count exactly as a conventional palace girl.

  One of Judge Dee’s top priorities for this meeting with Ning was to fact-check the important, sensitive details about the empress in Luo Binwang’s mighty poem-like statement ‘Call to Arms’.

  Ning alone was in a position to verify some of the essential information mentioned in the piece, which could then provide reliable clues for Judge Dee’s investigation. So he’d had no option but to approach her in secret, even though it was a highly risky attempt, moving in a direction too sensitive to Empress Wu.

  Judge Dee had heard plenty of sordid gossip about the empress’s corrupt private life, and Luo’s indignant ‘Call to Arms’ accused her of many infamous deeds in this respect. He could not neglect his duty, despite the risks, and ignore these rumors, which could prove vital to his investigation. He wanted to verify – or disprove – the points raised not merely by Luo Binwang but by her other accusers.

  Judge Dee rose and helped Ning to slowly sit herself down at the table, on which eight small dishes of cold delicacies were already spread out. He picked up the silver wine kettle as he turned to Yang.

  ‘You just wait outside the door, Yang. Don’t let others enter. When the hot dishes are ready, you bring them in and serve them yourself. I do not want my talk with such an important guest to be disturbed.’

  ‘Got you, Master. I will not step away.’

  Dee then turned to Ning and poured the amber-colored rice wine into a dainty jade cup. ‘Ning, I know you, and I know you have suffered a lot. It’s so unfair to you.’

  Ning took the cup from him with tremulous fingers. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about who I am. Not at all.’ He continued with a reassuring smile, ‘To put it another way – and excuse me for saying so – you’ve already fallen to rock bottom. There’s nothing I can possibly do to hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt. On the contrary, I will try my level best to do something good for you.’

  ‘Really!’ She drained the cup in one feeble gulp.

  ‘This is just a simple meal in token of my sympathy for all you have suffered,’ he said, rising again to add more wine into her cup. ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot stay and talk with you here for too long today. I’m leaving for a long trip tomorrow morning. So for now, please tell me about what really happened to your former mistress, Empress Wang – in as much detail as much as you can.’

  Blinking her red-rimmed eyes in a daze for several minutes, Ning – sitting opposite Judge Dee – appeared still unable to grasp what was happening to her. She drained her second cup in another gulp. It was, Judge Dee supposed, another attempt to pull herself together. Or was she already an alcoholic?

  She then managed to launch into a narration that was almost incoherent, and was frequently interrupted by coughing, hiccuping, drooling and sobbing. From time to time, her mind seemed to fail her, and at one point, she appeared to be lost in a total trance and sat there tongue-tied for no less than three or four minutes.

  While listening to Ning’s broken narration, Judge Dee could not help thinking of a poem titled ‘The Outer Palace’. It was a sad and sentimental piece written by a well-known contemporary Tang poet named Yuan Zhen.

  In the deserted outer palace,

  the flowers bloom into a blaze

  of solitary, scarlet splendor.

  White-haired palace ladies

  long deserted there, still

  sit and talk languidly

  about the late Tang emperor.

  The vision presented an image that was so cruel, so heart-breaking to Judge Dee. In his reading, the elusive, fragmented, imagined memories of brief moments in the former lives of the palace ladies applied to Ning as well – in the company of the late emperor. And these brief moments seemed to provide the only meaning to her existence, both now and to the end of her life.

  Indeed, what another poet says is so true.

  If all time is eternally present

  All time is unredeemable.

  Judge Dee managed to put together a patchwork history of Empress Wu out of Ning’s narration – distinguishable, although barely. According to Ning, Wu had been initially taken by the late Emperor Taizhong as nothing but a low-level palace lady. But it was an open secret that a palace lady could not say no to the emperor, in bed or anywhere else. And Emperor Taizhong had summoned Wu to his bedroom quite many times.

  After the death of Emperor Taizhong, in accordance with convention, Wu was sent to a Daoist temple to be a nun, in­­­accessible to any other men for the rest of her life. In the Daoist temple, however, Wu soon started having secret rendezvous with Emperor Taizhong’s son, the new Emperor Gaozhong. It could have been a huge scandal for him, as he had just ascended the throne and married Empress Wang, and he did not yet have his own power base consolidated. But rather than continue to meet Wu in secret, to the people’s shock he soon officially summoned Wu into the palace. And, needless to say, into his bed.

  Emperor Gaozhong lost no time promoting Wu to the top rank of imperial consorts, next only to Empress Wang. And Wu lost no time monopolizing the emperor’s favor either. The emperor was so totally bewitched by Wu that he refused to take a step into Empress Wang’s bedroom any more.

  The next year, Wu gave birth to a female infant, who died mysteriously in its crib. To people’s horror, evidence emerged suggesting that the cause of the death pointed toward brutal strangulation. Empress Wang had been seen visiting the infant’s room shortly before the tragedy, and hence was a possible suspect.

  Wu herself made the astonishing allegation that Empress Wang had murdered the infant out of insane jealousy. In corroboration, several eyewitnesses quickly rushed to the fore and testified about Empress Wang’s stealthy visit to the baby’s room that day.

  Lacking a solid alibi, Empress Wang was unable to clear her name in the ensuing investigation, and Emperor Gaozhong was eventually led to believe that his wife had indeed killed the infant.

  No credible information or evidence about the murder of Wu’s daughter existed, however, and counter-theories and speculation began spreading like wild weeds. According to one popular theory, Wu herself had killed her own baby in order to implicate Empress Wang.

  Throughout Ning’s narration, she seemed to remain objective, without venturing to say anything about her opinion regarding the case. Did she think the former empress was a murderer, or that the current Empress Wu was the real murderer? If she had an opinion, she did not say.

  As an experienced judge, Judge Dee knew he had to take into consideration that Ning had been crushed by the tyranny of Empress Wu. Ning dared not – or could not – speak truthfully of Empress Wu. Little wonder about that. The orthodox Confucianist officials tended to portray Empress Wu as an evil, power-hungry woman, cold-blooded about the people she wanted to get rid of. Even Judge Dee could not afford to take these counter-theories for granted.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, Wu succeeded in removing Empress Wang from her royal position. The enraged emperor eventually deprived Wang of her title and replaced her with Wu, who became the next empress of the great Tang Empire.

  Ning finished telling her tale, and Judge Dee silently added a further conclusion. For not too long after Wu became empress, her rival, the former Empress Wang, was murdered too. Another Tang Empire mystery that could not be solved, Judge Dee contemplated. Ning was not aware of the tragedy, as she’d been kept in isolation until about a month ago, and he chose not to break the news to her now. He knew it could prove to be too much of a shock.

  Judge Dee drained his cup with a long sigh and watched despondently as Ning shuffled out of the room with the help of Yang, her face veiled again, her body tremulous like a black raven in the cold wind.

  Incredibly, Dee thought, Ning’s patchwork account largely verified Luo Binwang’s account of Empress Wu’s crimes in his ‘Call to Arms’.

  Three or four hours later, Judge Dee invited a group of poets to dinner at a quiet, willow-shaded hostel located on the outskirts of the Chang’an capital.

  It happened also to be on the way to the first stop he had decided to take for his investigation, so it was natural for him to choose the hostel for the night. After all, he was an old man, too worn out to travel overnight.

  Judge Dee had arranged the dinner party for the purpose of gathering and sorting through more information about the vanished Luo. All five of the poets he’d invited were renowned for their work, though they were not as well known as Jiong Yang or Luo Binwang.

  Now, the poets had all arrived at the hostel, and they gathered together for the meal. A light dinner was already laid out on the round table in the center of the private dining room for them.